writer’s group

This Sunday I joined my first-ever writer’s group. We met at a coffee shop in Williamsburg, dubbed ourselves the Lonely Writer’s Club (I know, I know — pause for a moment to allow your eyes to return to a forward-facing position), and opened with five minutes to free-write. These days I almost never free-write, so it was a lovely release to pull up a word doc and just type. We meet every other Sunday, so afterward — should I deem it presentable — I’ll post my free-write here.

This week’s prompt was: Imagine the people who will live in your apartment after you. My response was: poor souls.

***

At first, they’re happy. They see the high ceilings and kick the crown molding to make sure it holds and marvel at the counter space, the big kitchen, the morning light in their bedroom with a tree — a real tree — outside their window. That’s late August. By November they begin to notice things they hadn’t before: the way the far right kitchen corner crumbles in on itself, each time making a tinkling sound like breaking glass. They begin to feel the drafts around the shoddy windows, and the heat hisses through the pipes like a haunting.

The stove hasn’t been replaced in years, and when either front burner is ignited, it all but explodes. New fissures in the ceiling appear, snaking toward the center with almost imperceptible slowness. When spring comes in March, so do the centipedes, sneaking out from beneath the bathroom sink and skittering across the floor. They’re big — two inches long — with the exoskeletons of creatures extinct since the Pleistocene. They take ages to die when Jill squishes them, their legs twitching long after their tiny heads (or tails, she can never be certain) are smashed in.

Then, in April, Cass wakes up with a bite. It’s small at first, but as the day goes on it spreads, leaving a blotchy red rash across her left thigh. It itches. And Cass, the level-headed one, starts to crack. And the Bushwick apartment they were so proud of — where she and Jill had thrown parties and stacked books cooked elaborate dinners — begins to collapse inward.